Ana V. '15
Mar 31 2013
August, Airplanes, and why not throw in Spring Break, too?
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Visit, Life & Culture
3/22
Welcome to the unfiltered stream of my consciousness. Please pardon the incoherentness.
Right now I'm at an airport, watching my Terrascopers from Mission 2016 bond as we await to board a plane to Houston, then to Las Vegas, then a bus to somewhere mountain-ey. (Look they did awesome things (including making this website)-- I'm so proud of them!) We're going to see mines and things related to Mission 2016, which was focused on rare earth elements, to be brief (more info in website!^^)
If you want to see awesome pictures of the American Southwest and read about what we're doing on this trip, YOU SHOULD VISIT THIS BLOG. (Written by the awesome '16s.) If you want more pictures and gems from her travels, visit Lealia '15's photography blog!
This past week was more intense than a monkey complaining about not getting grapes, like the other monkeys. I actually just got out of a thermo test, and now I get to ponder about it some more once I hear the jet engines whirlin'. :)... read the post »
Feb 24 2013
2015 Brass Rat
Posted in: Life & Culture
Last Friday, Kirsten '15 and I (well actually the whole class of 2015) lined up outside in the chilly weather right outside of Kresge auditorium for a good half hour. For what purpose was this?
^We lined up with our sorority sisters.
RING PREMEIRE!!!!!
MIT has a very long and rich tradition of "The Standard Technology Ring" (but everyone calls it the Brass Rat). Basically, every class gets to choose a committee to design the class' ring. For such a small piece of jewelry, it has so many symbols on it in honor of various events and ideas. Some ideas appear from year to year (such as "IHTFP" and the ivy leaves), while others are meant to commemorate attributes from only the class.
If you google anything about the Brass Rat, you might find that...
- Iron Man wears it.
- And Hamsika '13
- And Snively '11
- And Melis A. '08
- And Matt '00 (And he gives you a look at the brass rats from 2000-2010 :D)... read the post »
Dec 11 2012
Stressful Times
Posted in: Miscellaneous
I'm going to confess something.
A bit more than two years ago, I remember asking my parents to bless my application. I'm pretty sure that I would have sprinkled holy water on it if I had access to some. If someone would have told me that they got into MIT because they danced around with their application package in the snow while chanting, "Accept me, oh Institute," I must admit that I would have thought to try that.
So after I asked my parents to bless my application envelope, they did. Hesitatingly. I could tell that they just did it so I could stop squaking about how nervous I was. Boy, they didn't understand, though! It was MIT that I was applying to. This was important! This was about my future.
*facepalm*
I remember my dad looking at me with his honest, slightly concerned eyes as he said, "Ana, the only thing you ever have to worry about is about doing your best. That's it. Just do your best." I also remember thinking about how painfully obvious that was. Of course... read the post »
Nov 25 2012
Engineering Poetry
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Academics & Research, Life & Culture
The last post I made was about my summer, and I haven’t even written about August yet. If that doesn’t give you an indication of how fast time is going by for me, I don’t know what would. Since then, I’ve been pondering about life, setting new goals, realizing even further what it means to work hard and play hard, and helping out with Terrascope.
And because I enjoy life-pondering and expressing it, I’ve also been taking a great class—Poetry Workshop. This is a class in which we share our poems and criticize/ comment on them. We meet every Tuesday for three hours in the evening, and each week there is a different theme for our poetry, but we’re not obligated to make it fit the theme so long as we’re reasonably inspired by anything else. For three hours we read and talk poetry. You’d think it's an insane amount of time to be doing this, but it’s not. (This is mainly due to how awesome and entertaining these poems are.)
For example, this pantoum, written by Heather '13—
... read the post »
Oct 14 2012
July and Unified
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Life & Culture
I have a billion things to say about this semester already and I'm not even done writing about this summer! WHY?
Before I go back to this summer, my life thus far has been a conglomoration of time speeding hazily by. I've been...
- Trying to cook food more without setting off any alarms (a sure sign of sophomore-ish maturity, or so I think)
- Getting my first taste of Chipotle with the bloggers
- Spending a lot of time in the Unified Lounge (Unified is a course 16 class sophomore year that I will without a doubt write more on later when I catch up to October...) and building gliders for it.
- Running away from getting (not even my own) birthday cake on own face.
(1)
(2)
(3) I'm not sure who drew that but it's awesome.
(3) Balsa wood gliders, that is.
(4) She had to retaliate against getting cake smeared on hers. >:)
In any case, I must return to my summer before winter rolls around. During... read the post »